Privacy and the Media: Two Perspectves - What Does the Public Have a Right to Know

Head Table Guests

Mary R. Byers, Author and Historian and Honorary Director, The Empire Club of Canada; Yvonne Cuellar, OAC Student, Parkdale Collegiate Institute; Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling, Senior Minister, Timothy Eaton Memorial United Church; Vincent A. Carlin, Chair, School of Journalism, Ryerson Polytechnic University; Timothy S.B. Danson, Partner, Danson Recht & Freedman; The Honourable Sidney B. Linden, Chief Justice, Ontario Court (Provincial Division); Knowlton Nash, Chairman, The Canadian Journalism Foundation; John D. Ferguson, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, CIBC; Edwin Goodman, Partner, Goodman Phillips & Vineberg; Frances Lankin, MPP Beaches Woodbine, and former Minister in the Rae Government; Bob Culbert, Executive Director, CBC Television News and Public Affairs; and C. Alex Squires, Managing Partner, Brant Securities Ltd. and a Director, The Empire Club of Canada.

Introduction by George L. Cooke

We are twice honoured today, having two guest speakers each prominent within his area of expertise. The Honourable Bob Rae, former Premier of Ontario and Partner with Goodman Phillips & Vineberg and Mr. Tony Burman, Head of CBC Newsworld, are here today to give their individual perspectives of privacy and the media.

Bob Rae in his current role of Partner with Goodman Phillips & Vineberg serves a client list which includes Canadian companies, trade unions, charitable and non-governmental organisations, as well as governments themselves. He has extensive experience in negotiation, mediation and arbitration. He also shares responsibilities for the operation of the firm's foreign office.

Mr. Rae served as Premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995 and was elected eight times to federal and provincial parliaments before his retirement from politics in 1996. He led the New Democratic Party of Ontario from 1982 to 1996 and served as Leader of the Official Opposition before becoming Premier.

Mr. Rae has a B.A. and an LL.B. from the University of Toronto and was a Rhodes Scholar from Ontario in 1969. He obtained a B.Phil. degree from Oxford University in 1971 and was named a Queen's Counsel in 1984. Mr. Rae received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1998, and was appointed to Her Majesty's Privy Council for Canada in the same year.

Mr. Rae heads, or is a participant in, numerous committees which represent charities or involve important issues.

He has had two books published: "From Protest to Power" and "The Three Questions," and is a regular columnist in The Globe and Mail. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto and an Associate Fellow of Massey College.

Tony Burman is one of the CBC's most widely experienced journalists. He has assumed a variety of senior programming and management roles and produced many award-winning news and documentary programmes with both CBC television and radio over the past 25 years.

He was appointed Head of CBC "Newsworld" effective February 1. He had served as executive producer of CBC television's nightly flagship news and current affairs hour since January, 1993, when he was asked to take over CBC "Prime Time News." He initiated the redesign of the CBC "Newshour," its return to the traditional 10 o'clock time slot and its successful transition to "The National."

Previously, Mr. Burman was appointed Chief News Editor of CBC Television in August, 1990, where he oversaw the entire English news service of the corporation. He was responsible for all of the major news programmes and news specials on the network, including special coverage of the Oka blockage in 1990, the Gulf War in 1991 and the Charlottetown Referendum in 1992.

Prior to that assignment (1985-1990) he was a senior documentary producer for five years with "The Journal" where he produced many Gemini award-winning documentaries which were rebroadcast on the BBC, PBS and other foreign networks. From 1982-1985 Mr. Burman spent three years based in London as the European Bureau Producer for "CBC Television News." Prior to being posted abroad, Mr. Burman was Executive Producer of "The National" (1980-82) and created the redesign of the newscast when it moved in 1982 to its new prime-time slot of 10 p.m. (joined by "The Journal"). Between 1975-80, he served with "The National" in Toronto in a variety of editorial roles. Prior to 1975, Tony Burman worked for CBC Television in Montreal as a current affairs story editor; and for CBC Network Radio in Montreal as a contributing producer to "As it Happens" and executive producer of "Cross Country Check Up," the CBC's national open-line programme.

Mr. Rae, Mr. Burman, welcome to The Empire Club of Canada.

Tony Burman

I stand before you, humbly, as a typical representative of the Canadian media--self-righteous, sanctimonious, hypocritically pious and hollow to the core, loved only by my family and my daughter's gerbil and I'm admitting all of this because the public has a right to know.

The other day I was reading a new book by a certain former Ontario premier and the following sentence leapt off the page and socked me in the nose:

"No institution in civil society is as self-righteous or unexamined as the media."

As part of the CBC, I'll certainly concede that we can be self-righteous--we actually think that this is part of our charm--but surely we're not unexamined. However, my goal in the next few minutes will be to scamper in the direction of some safe moral high ground so that by the end of this lunch, both Bob Rae and I are in agreement that Jerry Springer is the cause of it all.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak about Privacy and the Media. It's a timely issue, and one that the CBC--both radio and television--wrestles with every day.

This debate is even more urgent now because so much information is available. Virtually every media outlet in this country has an Internet connection and most have web sites where debate and discussion never stop.

Technology is one big part of the change. We are doing amazing things with computer chips, and this is raising fears about the rise of a 'surveillance society.' Advances in technology have made it routine for much of what people do to be recorded electronically.

American culture critic Neil Postman gave a speech in Toronto last May in which he urged journalists to transform information into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom: "Like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, we are awash in information without even a broom to help us get rid of it."

As Canadians, we have had a front-row seat in that Great American Drama which never seemed to take an intermission. From the land of Gary Hart, Clarence Thomas and O.J. Simpson, where the line between private and public lives has long been blurred, we got 12 unrelenting months of Clinton and Lewinsky.

In the debate over privacy, this saga is likely to be a watershed in the United States. For all of the sins of Bill Clinton, the episode became, among other things, a breathtaking invasion of the privacy of so many people by Kenneth Starr, the Republican Party and the American media, each of them feeding and encouraging the prurient appetites of the other.

On the politicians' part, it seemed to be another chapter in that unfinished cultural war being waged since the 1960s, aimed at eliminating 'enemy ideas' from the American moral landscape. On the media's part, it was a grasp at staying alive in the brutal competitive marketplace of the American media today.

The heroes in this sordid affair have been the American people who consistently in polls have shown that they at least know the difference between private passions and the public interest--the difference between what may be 'interesting' and what is 'important.'

So what are the lessons from all of this for Canadians and, in particular, the Canadian media? Although we have our own unique set of imperfections, Canadians have generally been indifferent to the private lives of public figures, and our media have consistently been far less aggressive than Americans in this regard.

I remember as far back as 1976, I was lineup editor for The National on CBC Television which meant that I was part of the team which determined the order of the stories on the newscast.

A big topic of gossip then was the state of the relationship between Prime Minister Trudeau and his wife Margaret. But like most of the Canadian media at the time, we virtually ignored the personal side of their marriage until they actually separated even though we kept getting calls from American networks who were mystified that we weren't getting the story for them.

Ten years later, I produced a documentary profile for The Journal of Nelson and Winnie Mandela. Nelson was still in jail, and Winnie had been harassed and exiled through most of their married life. Winnie Mandela was my key interview and the focus of the piece was to assess the charges which sent her husband to jail. Before we said good-bye to each other, she asked me whether I would be reporting any of the rumours that were swirling around South Africa about her personal life. I said: "No, that isn't our story."

In spite of Clinton, Lewinsky and Linda Tripp--and this is my self-righteous side speaking now--I suspect that approach would still be the case today for the CBC--and for most of the established Canadian media. And that is a good thing.

But there's more than Canadian gentility at play here. Canada's criminal code protects the privacy of citizens in a way that laws in Europe do not. Our photographers are more restricted. You can't stalk people here like Britain's tabloid press did to Princess Diana. And Canadian libel and slander laws are among the world's toughest.

Undoubtedly there is a growing public interest here in Canada in privacy issues. And our courts are reflecting that. Last year, in a case involving the CBC, the British Columbia Court of Appeal overturned a lower court's conviction of someone arrested on a police raid. The court ruled that the person's privacy had been invaded even though there was a search warrant because the police had invited a CBC television crew to accompany it on the raid.

For its part, the CBC has always taken privacy issues very seriously. We are not only the national public broadcaster but we are still a large news organisation in this country (or at least we were at noon, when I last checked) and we have an obligation to try to set and keep high standards. And to do so in an open and self-critical way. (For a group of the most thin-skinned journalists on the planet, this is not always an easy thing.)

Our 'bible' is a handbook of CBC Journalistic Standards and Practices. It's a large and detailed policy book that outlines the CBC practice on a wide range of journalistic issues. It is to these policies that anyone in the public can hold CBC journalists accountable. (Which is one reason you keep reading about us in your local newspaper.)

These policies are constantly under review. In the past year, senior journalists from the CBC's four media lines--Radio and Television from both the French- and English-language services--have worked on new language on a variety of privacy issues: hidden cameras and microphones, identifying criminal suspects, interviews without the consent of the subject, monitoring cell phones and the like.

A particular concern at the CBC is how do we avoid those sensational intrusions into people's grief and privacy, that can often be almost predatory. We now have policies that limit that.

In 1986, the Challenger Space Shuttle blew up with the school teacher Christa McAuliffe aboard. Some of you may remember the photograph that appeared the next day in hundreds of American newspapers and dozens of Canadian ones. It showed the parents and sister of Christa McAuliffe. According to the picture's cutline, this was a family in grief, photographed moments after the explosion. It triggered a real controversy over whether this was an intrusion of this family's privacy.

It was only the next day that it was learned that this picture was actually taken minutes BEFORE the explosion. (and we wonder why the public views the media with suspicion!)

But in spite of all of this, freedom of expression and freedom of the media are cornerstones of our society. Freedom itself can't flourish without the free flow and exchange of ideas, opinions and information. It's a principle of our democracy and vital to the defence of individual liberty. And at the CBC we accept that to share in this freedom there are obligations that come with it.

As there is a need for truly effective media, there is a need for public confidence in the media. The essential role of the Canadian media--we would like to believe--is to provide the information people need to participate fully in this democracy. To help Canadians understand the issues influencing their lives and the choices facing them as citizens.

The fact is that a lot of politicians, once elected, don't quite do what they said they would do when they ran. So voters don't only look at issues. They look at more abstract considerations such as 'character' or 'integrity' or 'trustworthiness.' And that's where the personal and private lives can sometimes intersect.

We also shouldn't forget the 'other side' of 'privacy'--the notion that in some ways it is a late 20th-century device employed by scoundrels who have sought publicity through much of their lives as politicians, movie stars or public figures but at the last moment--usually before arrest--they claim the right to privacy.

The point being that there aren't only two actors in this play The Prominent and The Press. There is The Public.

It's the public's right to know--not the media's right to know--that matters. And whenever the media abuse their power, we deserve the public's wrath.

But the excesses of our American neighbours shouldn't blind us from the fact that there is a public interest. The public does have a right to know about the issues and people that shape their lives and there are forces determined to shield the public from knowing many things which it truly needs to know.

As James Thurber once wrote: "Conscience is the awareness that someone might be watching."

Which is all to say--in conclusion--something that I'm sure Bob Rae will agree with: It's all Jerry Springer's fault.

Bob Rae

I very much appreciate the chance to speak to the Club and to follow Tony's comments. When he was describing the scoundrel who claims the right to privacy, I trust he wasn't speaking about me because he was referring to somebody about to be arrested--unless he knows something that I am not yet aware of.

Orwell describes in "1984" a totalitarian world from a political standpoint in which there is a television in every room. The television is watching Winston Smith and everyone else and the Orwellian description is one that we've always associated with political totalitarianism and with political dictatorship. Orwell was even more prescient than he knew because the problem is not so much that somebody is watching us. There are very few transactions that one can undertake in today's society without some record being kept of that transaction. This is not just about politicians or even recovering politicians. It's about citizens. What I think is troublesome about the culture in which we are living is that the right to know is suddenly transformed into a world in which there is literally no private space. I hope all of us recognise the horror of Orwell's vision in which there was no private space and in which even private relationships could not be privately consumed without being reported on and without being observed and ultimately used to betray Winston Smith and ultimately destroy him.

This is not just about politics though of course it is impossible for us to talk about the theme of privacy in the media without immediately thinking of politics and events south of the border over the last while. I have no observation to make about that other than to say that in my opinion the nation has no place in the bedrooms of the state. You can use that if you like. I think it is quite good. It has a certain ring to it.

The definition of a culture is one in which those who are participating in it have a symbiotic relationship to it. There is something in the confessional style, particularly of American politics but not just American politics, which contributes to the end of privacy. In order to satisfy the public's interest in the whole picture, the whole personality and the whole character, people often feel a need, particularly the politicians south of the border, to confess, to talk, to describe the 12-mile walk to school in bare feet and all other elements of one's upbringing.

It is hardly any surprise that people would say: "Well if that's the story you want to tell about your personal life and your private life let's find out if it's really true," I must confess from that perspective it's entirely fair game. I often feel that part of the answer to the issue of how we re-establish some sense of private space and some sense of where the penetrating eye of the media can and can't go is for the people who are subject to that eye to say: "None of your business." Imagine for a moment how different the debate over the last year and a half in America would have been if instead of saying "I never did it; it never happened," someone had said: "It is none of your business."

I think in Canada, as Tony has well described, there is a very broad general view that there are issues that are not worthy of discussion or debate. We don't think it's important to discuss publicly the sexual orientation of people who are in public life. I think that's an enormously healthy sign. Let people decide how they want to describe themselves, how they want to present themselves. Whether they choose to do so or not is entirely their business. The fact that we are still thankfully living in a culture where it is possible to do that is an entirely good sign.

But it does require discipline from both sides. It isn't good enough for people to simply blame the media because people watch the media and the media is responding to what they perceive as a public appetite and a public desire to know. Sometimes that desire is prurient. It is not fed entirely by the media. It is something which the public itself establishes.

And here I must confess to being a little more troubled. Because I am not an official of the CBC I have to look at the whole of the media and conclude that I don't think anybody can look at the dumbing-down process that takes place and not be concerned. Stories which five or 10 years ago would never have appeared in a newspaper now often appear in the guise of a gossip column. The Internet has played a substantial role in this in terms of the amount of information and rumour and insinuendo which is quite easily spread and quite easily accessible and which normally established media feel a need to compete with and to compare with and to respond to. This is an issue that has got to be troubling to everyone.

Let me conclude by saying that the most important issue that we have to recognise is two-fold. First of all this is not an issue about politicians or people in public life seeking some sort of special status for themselves. I fully accept and fully endorse that there is a public right to know and that it's inevitable that people want to know about other people. When people become subjects of public notoriety or public interest it's inevitable, natural and entirely to be expected that there will be all sorts of comment and commentary about what kind of a person is so and so and what kind of a life does he or she in fact lead? What is that person really all about? I want to stress this question of privacy is not a special issue for the political class or for the business class or for anyone else. It is an issue that affects each and every citizen. It is about our willingness to establish a civil political culture. It is about our willingness to establish a civil culture generally in which we recognise that we don't need to know or ought not to know absolutely everything about everybody. That there are areas of life which are legitimately to be set aside and not to be subject to public discussion.

Finally let me assure anyone in the audience that I would be the very last person who would seek further public regulation of this issue. I think most of the suggestions as to how to deal with it create a set of issues that are much worse than the original problem. The issue frankly is self-regulation. Regulation by all of us as consumers. If we turn off the set, if we refuse to buy the media, if we don't buy the argument, I think that will begin to change the culture. I would be very surprised for example if there weren't some real issues raised on a long-term basis with respect to what's taken place in the United States because of the enormous human impact on literally dozens of people and on many many lives. It means of course a sense of responsibility by the media. I think the kind of code of conduct which Tony has described for the CBC is one that everybody should be reflecting on and thinking about. But fundamentally it is a question of our own willingness to respect each other's place, each other's sense of space, and each other's sense of having a life that is lived outside the realm of Orwell's searching and never-ceasing eye.

Thank you very much.

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by Knowlton Nash, Chairman, The Canadian Journalism Foundation.